Vida Goldstein

Vida Goldstein (13 April 1869-15 August 1949) was an Australian feminist and suffragist who, in 1902, became the first woman in the British Empire to stand for election to national parliament.

Biography
Vida Mary Jane Goldstein was born in Portland, Victoria, Australia in 1869, the daughter of a suffragist mother. She was educated privately and ran a coeducational primary school with her sister from 1892 to 1898. During this time, she became engaged in social work and in activity for the women's suffrage movement. In 1899, she was recognized as the leader of the radical women's movement in Victoria, and in 1902 she was elected secretary to the International Woman Suffrage Conference in the United States. Australian women were enfranchised in 1902, whereupon she became the first woman in the British Empire to stand for election to national parliament. She concluded from her defeat that women needed better organization, which she pursued through the Women's Political Association and her newspaper, the Women's Sphere. She failed in four subsequent attempts to enter federal parliament, not just because of her sex, but also because of her failure to register with any party, her radicalism (such as her committed advocacy of pacifism during World war I), and her unusual opposition to the White Australia Policy. She influenced many advances in social welfare not just for women, such as the realization of equal property rights for men and women, and the Harvester Judgement which established the principle of a minimum wage.